Iron Man 2

(Sega for PS3)
By Mike Delano

The gaming world felt a shock to its system around this time last year when X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a movie tie-in game that by all accounts of history was destined to be another half-assed rush job, turned out to be a very entertaining Devil May Cry/Ninja Gaiden-style hack ‘n’ slasher. It even had some personality: Unlike the movie, its developers let Wolvie claw apart his enemies in gruesome, awesomely over-the-top ways. In 2010, though, it’s back to the reality of movie tie-in games with Iron Man 2. Don’t expect any personality here, the game exhibits the absolute minimum of effort in its gameplay and presentation. The look of the game, from the action to the cutscenes, is uniformly ugly, and whether you’re controlling Iron Man or War Machine, the weaponry that should be game’s selling point feels unresponsive and ineffectual. The only aspect of Iron Man 2 that feels somewhat superhero-like is your ability to fly and make interesting vertical use of the environments in combat situations, but like Dark Void earlier this year, the controls aren’t nearly polished enough to make this complex mechanic work smoothly. Outside of a cool final battle with Ultimo (no spoiler here, he’s shown on the back of the box), you’ll mostly be flying Iron Man around to press buttons, anyways, just like you’ll be doing as you lunge from the couch to the off button.
(www.sega.com)